Racing from back Shillong enter Super Cup quarterfinals
Sportslogon Team April 4th 2018

Bhubaneswar : Double goals down Shillong Lajong FC made a brilliant come back, with the injury time spot kick conversion by Samuel Lalmuanpuia guided Shillong Lajong into the quarterfinals of the first edition Hero Super Cup, winning over FC Pune City by 3-2 goal at Kalinga Stadium here on Wednesday.

It had been raining heavily in Bhubaneswar but the ground condition was perfect to carry forward the match. It was proved to be the goal showering pre-quarterfinal match. Three goals were resulted in the first half and two more in the second half with lot of half-chances for both the teams.

Shillong forward Koffi was barged into the box by defeating the defence line of Pune, while he was about to score the goalkeeper Nidhin Lal brought down him which was resulted in a spot kick in favour of Shillong in the 90+1 minute.

Samuel Lalmuanpuia took the spot lick and his powerful penalty into the bottom left corner past goalkeeper Vishal Kaith who had dived the right way to put Lajong in the 3-2 lead in the 90+2 minute for the first time in the nail biting match. Samuel took away the match from Pune City and adjudged as the Hero of the match award.

The Brazilian Jonathan Lucca opened the account for Puna City FC in the 17th minute with his fabulous free-kick into the top left corner of the net, left Shillong goalkeeper Nidhin Lal clueless and helped Pune City to take a 1-0 lead.

Pune mid-fielder Diego Carlos was raced forward with the ball and found skipper Marcelo Pereira to his right who put it into the top corner of the net to double the lead in the 22nd minutes.

Conceding double goals down in the first half itself, Shillong Lajong FC reconsolidated their strength, mid-fielder Daniel Odafin’s perfect ball landed into the feet of Abdoulaya Koffi whose brilliant first touch allowed him to create space inside the box and in the one to one encounter he got passed Pune goalkeeper Vishal Kaith to make it 1-2 by the end of first half.

After the change of sides, Pune City got few scoring opportunity but could not converted those half chances. However, Shillong Lajong mid fielder Sheen Stevenson’s through-ball reached nicely into the path of an overlapping Rakesh Pradhan and who scored the equaliser 2-2 for Shillong in the 61st minute.
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